Nina, the Bandit Queen by Joey Slinger

to wait around the corner, out of sight of Nina, and when the truck came by it wouldn’t know they were her daughters. They would probably have to use fake names.
    Gwinny wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with the scheme, because she had her own ideas about her life and where it was heading and how she would get there, and she didn’t want Merly prying into her fuckin’ business about anything, any time. Lady went along with Merly, but Merly knew that if anything got too weird she would make a big fuss and cause trouble. Maybe even bloodshed. Sometimes when she wasn’t interested in punching Merly, she bit her.
    “How much do you think they’d give us?” Lady said, after Merly outlined her idea.
    “Hundreds,” Merly said. She had no idea, but considering how Lady’s mind worked, it made sense to sound like they’d be getting big money. Lady liked things when she knew how they would come out exactly. That was why she spent so long reading the instructions that came with stuff. Most people who bought things paid no attention to the manuals, but Lady would memorize them. In fact, because nothing new ever came into their house, no manuals did either, so she would memorize other peoples’, or even manuals that she found in the trash. Going over how things worked could keep her occupied for hours.
    She thought about the hundreds Merlina had mentioned. Then she wrote the number five on the concrete step as if her finger was a piece of chalk. “Five hundreds?” she asked.
    “Probably.”
    “Five hundreds would make Mom really happy.”
    “But if we wanted to, we could just give her four.”
    Lady stiffened. She stared at the invisible number she’d written on the step. Merlina had hoped she could kind of sneak that part of the idea in. “Four hundred and fifty?” Merlina said.
    “Why not all five?”
    “In case we wanted to keep some for ourselves.” Lady snapped her head around and looked at her sister, and Merlina knew she was going to have to work hard to sell this angle.
    “To buy ice cream with?” Merly suggested.
    “That’s stealing.”
    “It is so not stealing! It’s just a little bit extra for us. For the work we’ve done to raise it.”
    “Why don’t we just steal some money and buy ice cream with that?” Lady said. Not only was ice cream not at the top of Lady’s priority list, there was no logic behind her thinking.
    “Okay, okay, okay.” The important thing was agreeing on the main goal.
    “You’re always like that, Merly,” Lady said. “You’re always thinking about what you can get out of something. That’s all you care about.” She stamped up the steps and into the house.
    This didn’t especially bother Merly. As long as Lady was busy being upset about the ice cream part of the plan, she wouldn’t pay close attention to the other parts, which started happening more quickly than Merly was completely prepared for.
    It was because Lady heard her sister talking to a stranger that she came back out on the porch. And when Merlina whizzed past holding a bunch of money, she tore into the house after her.
    “Mom! Mom!” Merly hollered. “Look! For your pool!”
    Nina was sitting at the kitchen table looking quite confused, as if she didn’t know what to do about the hole where the back door used to be. With the door gone, the kitchen felt a whole lot bigger and a lot emptier. When Merlina pushed the money into her hands, it took a considerable effort to change from thinking about the missing door. “What’s —”
    “How much is it, Mom,” Lady yelled. “How much did she give you?”
    “What’s this?” Nina looked at the money as if it was a snake that was about to sink its fangs into her chin.
    “How much is it?” Lady wanted the exact details, and wanted them right then.
    Nina spread the bills and held them up, all four of them. “What’s going on?”
    “You liar! Liar!” Lady balled her fists. Her yelling got even louder. “You lying fuckin’ liar!”
    There